Michigan officials confirm deer ’wasting’ disease

Michigan’s first case of chronic wasting disease was confirmed Monday in a white-tailed deer from a privately owned facility in the state’s western Lower Peninsula.

Michigan officials have quarantined all privately owned cervid facilities and banned the movement of all privately owned deer, elk and moose.

There is no evidence that the disease exists in free-ranging, wild deer in Michigan. But as a precaution, the state will increase its testing of wild herds and place restrictions on hunters in some areas.

Tim Martin

Michigan’s first case of chronic wasting disease was confirmed Monday in a white-tailed deer from a privately owned facility in the state’s western Lower Peninsula.

Michigan officials have quarantined all privately owned cervid facilities and banned the movement of all privately owned deer, elk and moose.

There is no evidence that the disease exists in free-ranging, wild deer in Michigan. But as a precaution, the state will increase its testing of wild herds and place restrictions on hunters in some areas.

“This will trigger a number of actions,” said Rebecca Humphries, director of the state’s Department of Natural Resources.

Officials say they don’t yet know how the deer, found in a Kent County facility, may have gotten the disease. Michigan has been testing for chronic wasting disease for several years, a process heightened when it was detected in Wisconsin in 2002.

The fatal neurological disease causes animals to display abnormal behavior and progressively lose weight. It’s been found in other states, mostly in the West, although it also has been detected in West Virginia and New York.

There is no evidence that people have ever caught chronic wasting disease from infected animals.

The state’s natural resources and agriculture departments are reviewing records from the Kent County facility and five others — including operations in Montcalm and Osceola counties — to trace deer and elk that have been bought, sold or moved in the last several years. Any deer that may have come in contact with a herd that has tested positive for chronic wasting disease has been traced and quarantined.

Officials would not identify the Kent County facility involved. But they said it was a facility used mostly for deer breeding.

The DNR soon will issue an order restricting baiting and feeding of deer in the Lower Peninsula.
Deer hunters this fall who kill deer from Kent County’s Tyrone, Solon, Nelson, Sparta, Algoma, Courtland, Alpine, Plainfield and Cannon townships will be required to bring their deer to a DNR check station.

Other hunters in Kent County, and perhaps elsewhere in the state, will be asked to visit DNR check stations so further biological samples can be taken from free-ranging deer.

The deer that tested positive was a doe that had been culled from the herd by the Kent County facility’s owner. Michigan law requires that sick deer in a private facility be tested for disease.

The facility was audited in 2004 and 2007. There were no violations reported in those audits. No escapes of animals have been reported from the facility.

DNR officials said they have tested nearly 250 wild deer in Kent County for chronic wasting disease since 2002.

In the summer of 2005, some deer in the area showed neurological symptoms similar to chronic wasting disease. But testing revealed the animals had Eastern equine encephalitis, not chronic wasting disease.